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2014 Socrates New York Salon

Featuring a reception and book talk with Aspen Institute President and CEO Walter Isaacson on his forthcoming The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses and Geeks created the Digital Revolution (2014), on the evening of Friday, November 14 at Hunter College.

The Innovators is Walter Isaacson’s revealing story of the people who created the computer and the Internet. It is a history of the digital revolution and a guide to how innovation really happens. What were the talents that allowed certain inventors and entrepreneurs to turn their visionary ideas into disruptive realities? What led to their creative leaps? Why did some succeed and others fail?

Isaacson explores the fascinating personalities that created our current digital revolution, such as Ada Lovelace, Vannevar Bush, Alan Turing, Bill Gates, Steve Wozniak, Steve Jobs, Tim Berners-Lee, and Larry Page. This is the story of how their minds worked and what made them so inventive. It’s also a narrative of how their ability to collaborate and master the art of teamwork made them even more creative. For an era that seeks to foster innovation, creativity, and teamwork, The Innovators shows how they happen.

The seminar, The Age of Enchanted Objects: The Next Wave of Tech Innovation and What It Means for How We Live and Do Business, will be moderated by William Powers, Research Scientist at MIT Media Lab, and David Rose, Visiting Scientist at MIT Media Lab and held on November 15th at the Roosevelt House.

We are living through an extraordinary moment where our relationship to technology is radically changing. Optimists welcome this change, arguing that technology is growing up and starting to take care of us. Are they right? What will be the impact of this shift on how we live, work and move around the world? Will it change how we do business? Will the data gathered by pervasive connected objects put more power in the hands of the individual, the corporation or the state?